Issue 45-46

ENCHANTED WORLDS

You rarely see wall cupboards like the one in Gayatri Manchanda's studio. From its depths the petite woman produces, one after another, canvases that portray the domes of St Vasiliy the Blessed Cathedral in Moscow, blue wild donkeys in a greenand- red landscape, a couple of abstract compositions, portraits of women, and a landscape with copper-red buildings against the backdrop of a black sky through which soars a golden aeroplane.

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BUGS

We're kids. We catch ten red ants in a match box. They are "the baddies." We throw them like storm troops on to the nest of quite smaller black ants who are "the goodies." We watch the vicious battle close up. With a matchstick I push back any red deserter into the acid of the battle field. I love the role of God. My matchstick is everywhere.

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DEGREES, An excerpt

We are out on the ice at the edge of the shantytown that resurrects itself here each winter. Vic is padlocking the door to his shanty. Like everyone else, he's painted his name and town on the side as is required by law. But unlike everyone else, he's added his street address, state, and zip code. And below that, in letters a foot high, he's spray-painted EARTH! in bright red.

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LOST REPUBLIC

"Tomrush is a picturesque village, with grey-roofed houses clustering on the side of a steep ravine; but its beauty has been marred by the wholesale destruction of the surrounding forest," James Bourchier, a reporter for The Times, wrote in the early 20th Century. The village is just a few kilometres from Plovdiv, in the northern Rhodope, but to get there Bourchier had to cross the border into the Ottoman Empire, escorted by Bulgarian soldiers.

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NORTHERN SEAS

For at least four months of the year the Black Sea coast is riddled with tourists, beach-goers and campers. Many people have been put off visiting the coastline – some because of the drastic overcrowding, others because of the newly-built concrete hotels of mammoth proportions that spring up all along the shore.

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STOP! ATTENTION! CROSS!

Over 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain Sofia City Council has decided to dismantle dozens if not hundreds of Communist-era signs that still adorn the façades, sides and roofs of houses and blocks of flats. For the time being council employees will reportedly be going around central Sofia jotting down the details, including locations, of the city's long-defunct neon lights in a log book. It is unclear when the actual dismantling will begin, nor how the sometimes massive signs, mainly wrought-iron and electrically illuminated letters, will be disposed of.

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SMOKERS IN, CHILDREN OUT

In a much publicised U-turn, the GERB-dominated Bulgarian parliament scrapped previous legislation to ban smoking in all public places. Instead, it decided to let restaurant and bar owners decide for themselves whether to make their properties non-smoking. Larger establishments will have to provide nonsmoking sections, a requirement critics say will mean nothing in reality.

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